Robert Hof
, ContributorI cover the collision of advertising and the Internet.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

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Mayer says she will outline the biggest opportunities for growth in 2013. Key challenges are increasing usage, growing international presence, and appealing to a broader demographic of users, "in roughly that order." She's aiming for a "chain reaction" of better and more engaging products, more usage, and more ad revenues. Key is products that make Yahoo a daily habit. Search, display, mobile, and video are the key areas of focus (not surprisingly).

We need to improve our overall engagement metric, she says. Mobile will be key to our business. Yahoo has 200 million unique mobile users. We intend ... to make mobile a material part of our business, she says.

Overall, she finishes up gamely, "The best is yet to come."

Now to the questions:

Q: What is the level of commercialization of Yahoo products--and does it need to be reduced to improve user engagement first? Mayer: No. I think the ads add a lot to the overall user experience. Some ads don't, though. For example, she did away with the opening page for Yahoo Mail, which was basically a page of ads, which wasn't useful for users.

Q: What metrics are best to track Yahoo's mobile efforts? Display revenues? Mayer: We're not breaking out mobile revenues this quarter. I would look at overall mobile user numbers, because revenue will follow. Mobile is generally incremental--that is, additional over desktop ads. As for why display revenues were down, ad prices were down about 10% in the first two quarters of last year, then in Q3 with the Olympics, prices improved.

Q: How do you see Yahoo's position in search in the long term vs. mobile and display? Mayer: It's a key area of investment for us. Yahoo and Microsoft teams are working well together. All the innovations in search will happen at the user interface level, we believe, so we will focus on that. (That was her big job at Google, though it's debatable whether user interface is the only opportunity for improvement.)

Q: Which areas will be first priority now that email and Flickr were addressed? Mayer: Won't say, but there are about a dozen areas she will cycle through.

Q: What other among those dozen products might you work on? Mayer: Still won't say. It may not map to exactly a dozen applications. But overall, main focuses remain mail, home page, and search. There's a few others where we have innovative ideas we will experiment with.

Q: How can you compete with Google, Microsoft, and Facebook on ads when they all have much more they can invest in research and development than Yahoo? Mayer: We're investing in small, nimble, and fast teams. Could have teams on iPhone and iPad, for example. Everything starts with a small team.

Q: Real-time bidding could become 20% of display revenues in 2013--how can Yahoo participate with Right Media? Mayer: We are very happy with our Right Media exchange. It does incredible volume. Will continue investing and make improvements in 2013.

Q: What has been driving acceleration in paid clicks in recent quarters, and can you keep it up? Mayer: Q4 is a very commercial quarter, and a lot of the increased clicks were users clicking on multiple ads in the same search. Hope to keep growth going by taking share.

Q: How does Yahoo get most of its mobile search queries, and how can you take market share in mobile? Mayer: Mobile Web, default search engine on iPhone for those who have chosen to do that.

Q: What can Yahoo do to compete in ad technology on mobile? Mayer: When users migrate en masse to a platform, there will be monetization opportunities. Right formats, pricing, and dynamics will be key, but will happen.

Q: Are 50% of your engineers on mobile now, as mentioned before? Mayer: We have started to shift engineering teams to do more mobile, but won't reveal percentage. Need to get to critical mass. Hired 120 new people with computer science degrees in Q4, mostly assigned to mobile.

Q: Is there any risk of mobile search cannibalizing desktop search? Mayer: It doesn't seem to be happening yet. If it does, hopefully the monetization will be equal on either desktop or mobile.

And that's the end of the call.

Here are the details from the release (the numbers below are for Q4 2012 and for the full year):

GAAP revenue

$1,346 million

$4,987 million

Revenue ex-TAC

$1,221 million

$4,468 million

GAAP income from operations

$190 million

$566 million

Non-GAAP income from operations

$283 million

$825 million

GAAP net earnings per diluted share

$0.23

$3.28

Non-GAAP net earnings per diluted share

$0.32

$1.17

"I'm proud of Yahoo!'s 2012 and fourth quarter results. In 2012, Yahoo! exhibited revenue growth for the first time in 4 years, with revenue up 2 percent year-over-year," said Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer. "During the quarter we made progress by growing our executive team, signing key partnerships including those with NBC Sports and CBS Television, and launching terrific mobile experiences for Yahoo! Mail and Flickr. At the same time, we achieved tremendous internal transformation in the culture, energy and execution of the Company." ...

And more details on the two ad businesses:

Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2012 Financial Highlights

Display

GAAP display revenue was $591 million for the fourth quarter of 2012, a 3 percent decrease compared to $612 million for the fourth quarter of 2011. GAAP display revenue was $2,143 million for the full year of 2012, a 1 percent decrease compared to $2,160 million for the prior year.

Display revenue ex-TAC was $520 million for the fourth quarter of 2012, a 5 percent decrease compared to $546 million for the fourth quarter of 2011. Display revenue ex-TAC was $1,899 million for the full year of 2012, a 2 percent decrease compared to $1,932 millionfor the prior year.

The number of ads sold on core Yahoo! Properties decreased approximately 10 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2011 and increased approximately 3 percent compared to the third quarter of 2012.

Price-per-ad on core Yahoo! Properties increased approximately 7 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2011 and increased approximately 15 percent compared to the third quarter of 2012.

Search

GAAP search revenue was $482 million for the fourth quarter of 2012, a 4 percent increase compared to $465 million for the fourth quarter of 2011. GAAP search revenue was $1,886 million for the full year of 2012, a 2 percent increase compared to $1,853 million for the prior year.

Search revenue ex-TAC was $427 million for the fourth quarter of 2012, a 14 percent increase compared to $376 million for the fourth quarter of 2011. Search revenue ex-TAC was $1,611 million for the full year of 2012, a 9 percent increase compared to $1,478 million for the prior year.

Paid clicks, or the number of clicks on sponsored listings on Yahoo! Properties and Affiliate sites, increased approximately 11 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2011 and increased approximately 8 percent compared to the third quarter of 2012.

Price-per-click increased approximately 1 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2011 and decreased approximately 2 percent compared to the third quarter of 2012.